The Getty opens its public domain art to all

The Getty launched its Open Content Program on August 12, 02013 to make digital versions of its public domain artwork available to all. They went above and beyond, as have some other cultural organizations, by providing "high-resolution, reproduction-quality images with embedded metadata, some over 100 megabytes in size."

I applaud The Getty's decision and hope that many more cultural institutions will follow their example. In British Columbia, the City of Vancouver Archives has a comparable policy to the Getty. I would love to see my former employer, the Royal British Columbia Museum, step onto the open access/open content stage. Perhaps this will happen once the BC Archives, which has been part of the RBCM for a decade, converts its database systems for public access via the new content management system, work on which has been underway for at least five years. Amazingly, the existing BC Archives search system is nearly 20 years old, possibly a world record when it comes to public access Web-based databases.

I've always felt it was wrong for cultural institutions to charge money for the use or licensing of public domain content they were preserving since most if not all these organizations also held full rights to other content or could find other ways to generate revenue.

 For some further information about The Getty's decision, see President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust Jame Cuno's article "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come" in The Getty Iris.

Yale University offers open access to digital images of objects from its collections

Yale University announced on May 10, 02011 that it is offering open access to "digital images of objects in its many collections freely available online. 'In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images, and no limitations will be imposed on their use,' the university said in its statement. 'The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration.' More than 250,000 images have already been made available in a new online catalog, the university said."

You can access these materials through the university's new search engine with the prosaic name of Cross Collection Discovery, part of its Yale Digital Commons network infrastructure.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, QuickWire, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-yale-u-to-offer-digital-images-of-objects-from-its-collections

New issue of open access journal LIBER Quarterly (Vol. 20, No. 1, 02010)

A new issue of the open access journal LIBER Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 1 (02010) is available. LIBER is the acronym for the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche or Association of European Research Libraries. This issue includes an article titled "User Collaboration for Improving Access to Historical Texts" by Clemens Neudecker and Asaf Tzadok in which they discuss the work of the 02008-02012 IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) project, one of whose goals is "to develop tools that help improve OCR results for historical printed texts, specifically those works published before the industrial production of books from the middle of the 19th century. ... The IMPACT project will specifically develop a tool that supports collaborative correction and validation of OCR results and a tool to allow user involvement in building historical dictionaries which can be used to validate word recognition." 

Google Public Data Explorer available in Google Labs

The Google Public Data Explorer is now available in Google Labs. The data sources are mostly from the United States. Google is looking for feedback.

Source: "Google Adds Public Data Search Tool To Labs", Matt McGee, Search Engine Land, 02010 03 08

First international Open Access Week, October 19-23, 02009

The first international Open Access Week celebration was launched on October 19 and ends on October 23, 02009. According to the Web site's About page,

Open Access Week builds on the momentum started by the student-led national day of action in 2007 and carried by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. 2008 organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the PLoS (The Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture welcome new key contributors for 2009: OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); Open Access Directory (OAD); and eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), which will again spearhead events in developing and transitional countries.

Long-term preservation of Open Access Journals secured

From the announcement on DIGLIB and other mailing lists (02009 04 01):

The Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) - Lund University Libraries and the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) today announced the start of a cooperation in order to secure long-term preservation of open access journals. The Swedish Library Association is generously acting as sponsor.

Long-term preservation of scholarly publications is of major importance for the research community. New formats of scholarly publications, new business models and new ways of dissemination are constantly being developed. To secure permanent access to scientific output for the future, focussed on the preservation of articles published in open access journals, a cooperation between Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ – www.doaj.org), developed and operated by Lund University Libraries and the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands (www.kb.nl/e-Depot) has been initiated.

The composition of the DOAJ collection (currently 4000 journals) is characterized by a very large number of publishers (2.000+), each publishing a very small number of journals on different platforms, in different formats and in more than 50 different languages. Many of these publishers are – with a number of exceptions – fragile when it comes to financial, technical and administrative sustainability.

At present DOAJ and KB carry out a pilot project aimed at setting up a workflow for processing open access journals listed with DOAJ. In the pilot a limited number of open access journals will be subject to long term preservation. These activities will be scaled up shortly and long term archiving of the journals listed in the DOAJ at KB’s e-Depot will become an integral part of the service provided by the DOAJ.

Session videos from The Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age, Texas A&M University, February 02009

Videos of sessions from The Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age, a symposium at Texas A&M University, February 11 to 13, 02009, are available.

Major library partners launch HathiTrust Shared Digital Repository

Update, 02008 11 10:

HathiTrust is currently experimenting with large-scale full text searching as part of an effort to create a mechanism to search across the entire repository. As an initial public beta of full text search functionality, we are offering a simple mechanism to search across all of the fully viewable works (both those in the public domain and those for which we have permissions) and a sprinkling of search-only works (i.e., in-copyright works where we may not show the text of the work).

The size of the content indexed is approximately 500,000 volumes, and the majority of the works are fully viewable. Although this is a fully functioning and reliable search mechanism for these works, we provide it as a public beta in order to learn more about these large search indexes in a public setting.

More information on our process to explore issues in this area is available in the HathiTrust.org large-scale search report.

http://www.hathitrust.org/large_scale_search

Original post, 02008 10 14:

An exciting development in the world of digital repositories, this may be a first for North America, the HathiTrust Shared Digital Repository:

A group of the nation’s largest research libraries are collaborating to create a repository of their vast digital collections, including millions of books, organizers announced today. These holdings will be archived and preserved in a single repository called the HathiTrust. Materials in the public domain will be available for reading online.

Launched jointly by the 12-university consortium known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the 11 university libraries of the University of California system, the HathiTrust leverages the time-honored commitment to preservation and access to information that university libraries have valued for centuries. UC's participation will be coordinated by the California Digital Library (CDL), which brings its deep and innovative experience in digital curation and online scholarship to the HathiTrust.

"This effort combines the expertise and resources of some of the nation’s foremost research libraries and holds even greater promise as it seeks to grow beyond the initial partners," says John Wilkin, associate university librarian of the University of Michigan and the newly named executive director of HathiTrust. Hathi (pronounced HAH-tee), the Hindi word for elephant incorporated into the repository's name, underscores the immensity of this undertaking, Wilkin says. Elephants also evoke memory, wisdom, and strength.

As of today, HathiTrust contains more than 2 million volumes and approximately 3/4 of a billion pages, about 16 percent of which are in the public domain. Public domain materials will be available for reading online. Materials protected by copyright, although not available for reading online, are given the full range of digital archiving services, thereby offering member libraries a reliable means to preserve their collections. Organizers also expect to use those materials in the research and development of the Trust.

Volumes are added to the repository daily, and content will grow rapidly as the University of California, CIC member libraries, and other prospective partners contribute their digitized content. Also today, the founding partners announce that the University of Virginia is joining the initiative.

Each of the founding partners brings extensive and highly regarded expertise in the areas of information technology, digital libraries, and project management to this endeavor. Creation of the HathiTrust supports the digitization efforts of the CIC and the University of California, each of which has entered into collective agreements with Google to digitize portions of the collections of their libraries, more than 10 million volumes in total, as part of the Google Book Search project. Materials digitized through other means will also be made available through HathiTrust.

HathiTrust provides libraries a means to archive and provide access to their digital content, whether scanned volumes, special collections, or born-digital materials. Preserving materials for the long term has long been a mission and driving force of leading research libraries. Their collections, accumulated over centuries, represent a treasury of cultural heritage and investment in the broad public good of promoting scholarship and advancing knowledge. The representation of these resources in digital form provides expanded opportunities for innovative use in research, teaching, and learning, but must be done with careful attention to effective solutions for the curation and long-term preservation of digital assets.

"The CIC Libraries have always worked at a large scale, with big collections, big user communities and high expectations for service. They are not intimidated by big challenges, and will bring their comfort with this to the development of the shared digital repository," says Mark Sandler, director of the CIC Center for Library Initiatives.

"The University of California libraries have an unparalleled reputation for innovation in digital library development and inter-institutional collaboration," says Laine Farley, interim executive director of the California Digital Library."Participation in the HathiTrust continues this tradition and will enable UC to provide its students and scholars with access to one of the most significant digital collections ever assembled." Adds Brian Schottlaender, the Audrey Geisel University Librarian at UC San Diego, "The University of California Libraries are pleased to work collaboratively with our CIC colleagues to build a rich and coherent resource accessible to scholars for the long-term."

"Researchers will benefit from the expert curation and consistent access they have long associated with the CIC research libraries," says Michael McRobbie, president of Indiana University. "Great libraries have long been essential to outstanding scholarship, and the HathiTrust collaboration among the CIC institutions, the University of California and others provides an essential tool for 21st- century scholars."

"Digitization of print texts has the promise of being transformative of scholarship and of library practice," says Paul Courant, University of Michigan librarian, dean of libraries, and former provost. "In both areas, the ability to search many texts and to preserve texts accessibly creates tremendous opportunities for collaboration amongst scholars and universities. HathiTrust has made a good start, and like the elephant for which it is named, we expect that it will prove able to carry and deliver valuable resources with grace and reliability."

"Before this collaboration," Wilkin says, "the collections in each library existed in isolation. Now we are bringing them together, pooling resources and eliminating redundancies, and producing a valuable research tool that will be greater than the sum of its parts." ...

Source: DIGLIB mailing list, 02008 10 14

Happy belated Open Access Day

The world's first Open Access Day was held on October 14, 02008. OAD was founded by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science.

[caption id="attachment_2510" align="alignleft" width="448" caption="Open Access Day"][/caption]